


This Place We Built With Grace and Guilt

by Cerusee



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: A little bit of comfort, Bedside Vigils, Bruce does it, Forgiveness, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I just want these two to be okaaaaaaaay, Injury, Jason does it, Mostly hurt, Reconciliation, Self-Flagellation, author does it, canon definitely does it, guilt guilt guilt, here have ALL my Jason/Bruce feels, reflections on questionable parenting choices, you always hurt the ones you love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 03:38:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10454130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: Bruce sits, listens to Jason breathe, looks at his pale face, and thinks, for the thousandth time:I don't know how to love you anymore.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This pile of emotional vomit is brought to you by my nine functioning fingers and a hangover.

Bruce sits and listens to the sound of Jason's breathing, listens as the suppressed whimpers and little hisses of pain give way to the shallow breaths of sleep.

He has done this for all of them; all his children, all his family. He's done it with Alfred. With Clark. Once with Jim Gordon, even. It's never easy. But with Jason...God, too many times with Jason. With Jason, there is always a ghost at the vigil. A creeping sense of fear, like the aftermath of one of Crane's concoctions. It underlines every interaction he has ever had with Jason since his return, alongside the echo of bewildered happiness, a toxic mix of dread and joy that always veers him off his intended path.

Bruce sits, listens to Jason breathe, looks at his pale face, and thinks, for the thousandth time: _I don't know how to love you anymore._

He puts a hand to Jason's head, runs it through the loose waves that have somehow replaced his boyhood curls. Aches again for all the changes that happened somewhere else that he couldn't see, in some other place, with some other protector, some other--some _vile_ \--mentor.

He still doesn't know a lot of it. He stopped looking once he understood, once he knew that it was Jason. Once it hurt too much to see him that way. To imagine how he became that way. He was a coward, and he stopped looking, and never asked Jason for details. He doesn't think any of them have ever been brave enough to ask Jason for details: How. When. With whom.

_Why._

He was volatile for so long, of course. Easily triggered to deadly violence, violence he had not shied away from at directing at Bruce, at Dick, at the children he barely knew. But that's not why they never asked. They didn't ask, and they still don't, because they suspect the answers will be terrifying. And for Bruce, a little, because he fears that to even ask Jason to voice his experience of those missing years might hurt Jason more, even as hearing it might devastate Bruce. He has remained trapped in an agonizing limbo since Jason came back and tore the city to pieces in a whirlwind of emotional revenge against Bruce for sins he hadn't even known then that he'd committed.

A thousand and one times: _I don't know how to love you anymore. I don't know how to not hurt you more. I don't know how to say I'm sorry._

Jason sleeps, and breathes, a terrible bruise slowly making itself known on his cheekbone. This was a bad one. A bad hurt, bad enough for Alfred to break out the morphine. Jason's going to be high as a kite when he wakes up, and not happy about it when the euphoric effects wear off. Catherine used heroin and Jason's never liked opioids. Even as a child--oh god, to think of it always stabs at him--with less experience of injury and less practice enduring physical pain, Jason viewed painkillers with an edge of suspicion. He didn't like taking them; watched quietly with set mouth when Alfred administered them to Bruce.

He can't even remember Jason as the sweet child he was without the memory being lined with grief and regret. Another thing taken from him.

_I don't know how to love you like this._

_Did I ever know?_

So many mistakes with Jason, then and now. He's made mistakes with all his children, but it's been the hardest with Jason. He was so...vulnerable, so damaged when Bruce met him; it's given him so little leeway to recover from those mistakes. He didn't see it at the time. When he first met Jason, he saw his strength, his spirit, his toughness. He saw the light in Jason first, bright enough to overcome the bleakness of Jason's situation, and he was drawn to it. The sheer nerve of a Crime Alley orphan, to take a tire iron to the wheels of the _Batmobile_...Jason has always known how to make Bruce laugh. He didn't realize, when he dangled that scrappy, undersized child in front of him and demanded his tires back, that Jason would always be able to make him weep, as well.

He has made many, many, mistakes with Jason. He has tried to forgive himself for the lesser ones--he could have wallowed in guilt forever for them, wanted to, beat himself with with them like a flail every time he remembered Jason's name, his face, his laughter--but enough grim, bring-him-to-his-senses conversations with Dick, Alfred, Clark, Barbara have taken their toll. Besides, it's all been overshadowed by the realization of his greatest mistake yet, the one that, strangely, no one has ever confronted him about, not even Alfred. 

Bruce has forgiven himself for not understanding right away why Jason hoarded food at first, stashed go bags around the Manor. He has forgiven himself for foolishly trying to protect Jason from the knowledge of his father's death (and for even more foolishly leaving evidence of it where Jason could too easily stumble across it). He hasn't quite forgiven himself for comparing Jason to Dick so many times in the early days--that one has left a wound Bruce can still see on Jason--but as Stephanie, of all people, once morbidly declared, _"What can you expect from an only child."_ Fatherhood, for Bruce, is traversing a never-ending stream of mistakes both universal and unique that he makes without knowing that he's making them until it's too late.

But oh, this haunting spectre hanging over him, whispering poison in his ear: he will not forgive himself for this one. Not ever. There will be no bring-Bruce-to-his-senses conversation for this one; this is Bruce already brought to his senses, and realizing what a colossal and unforgivable mistake he made with Jason, the mistake to end all mistakes.

He'd given up on him.

His mouth floods with bitterness. After everything, the scheme with Black Mask, the confrontation with the Joker, the explosion, when Jason had just vanished, when Bruce knew he might be dead and gone, _again_...he'd given up. He hadn't even known he was doing it at the time. Maybe it was shock. Maybe he'd gone numb, couldn't process anything that had happened, and so just tried to shut it all away, but he'd given up on Jason. He'd as much as said so when he told Alfred to leave the memorial case intact. Nothing had changed. His son was still dead. Dead, dead _to_ him, all the same. He hadn't looked for Jason, hadn't planned a plan to help him, bring him home, rehabilitate him. He'd shut down completely and refused to think about it. Jason had made that easy for a while, staying gone-and-presumed-dead again until he came roaring back into their lives to cause more hurt, more chaos. Dick and Tim and Damian had all dealt with the brunt of that; Bruce stayed distant from it, distant from his choice, distant from the consequences.

He could still barely think of it. That time. That...moment. It felt far away, and blank, and even now he was afraid to think of it in case the numbness gave way and he had to feel the consequences of....that. The moment when he chose between Jason and the Joker's life and he chose--he chose--

When he chose wrong. When he did _that_.

He'd run away from that moment for a very long time. No one knows about it but the three of them, Jason, Bruce, and the Joker; a sickening secret poisoning Bruce's soul and Jason's; delighting the Joker's. He doesn't think he could ever confess it to anyone. He doesn't know what's worse, the idea of confessing that moment to Babs or Dick or Alfred or Clark and having them shy away in revulsion at his terrible sin, or the idea that they might try to forgive what should not be forgiven. Not by them, anyway, not by anyone, ever, except Jason.

They've never talked about it. Bruce doesn't think Jason has forgiven him for it. He can't imagine how Jason can tolerate Bruce for a second, knowing that's between them. He does, somehow. These days.

Bruce looks at his sleeping son, takes his hand into his own, holds it gently, and thinks, _how can you love me now?_ How could Jason love him, when he'd hurt him, so deeply, on every level, and walked away from him for so long?

He's sat the whole night watching. Jason's started to stir. The morphine must be wearing off; he's whimpering a little in his sleep. Bruce wants to dose him again, spare him his pain, but he waits until Jason's eyes flutter open, and presses the pump into his hand.

"It's morphine," he tells him. "Hit the button if you need more." It's a standard hospital morphine pump that allows the patient to self-administer the drug as needed, up to a pre-set, safe amount, with no danger of overdosing.

Jason fumbles with it for a moment, and hits the button. "Thanks," he says. "F'r not doing it." The words are slurred. He peers up at Bruce through bleary eyes. "Ya look like shit."

"I'm fine. I've been sitting with you."

"No y'r not. G'some sleep."

"I feel better watching you," Bruce says. "It's hard to sleep when you're hurting."

"Do it anyway," Jason says. He's starting to perk up despite the drugs. "You're so shit at taking care of yourself."

Bruce can't help but smile. "I don't think you're in any position to be doing it yourself, chum."

"Robin's job," Jason says with a sly grin. There's a dirty little truth; it's always been Robin's job to look after Batman. Another mistake, one he's still making, and will continue to make. He can't help it. He needs them.

He looks at his boy, his lost-then-found child, lying in a hospital bed, drugged to the gills, pale and bruised and tired, with every reason in the world to hate him, telling him to take care of himself and to get some sleep. 

Something inside him cracks.

He leans over, presses his forehead to Jason's, rests a hand in Jason's hair, and whispers, "I'm sorry."

"Things are blurry right now," Jason mumbles against him, "but I don't think this one was your fault."

Bruce stays where he is, doesn't open his eyes, too afraid of what he might see in Jason's face. "No. Jason. Not...I'm sorry for giving up on you for so long. I wasted so much time, and I never should have...I'm so sorry, Jason, for what I did--"

Jason's hand comes up to gently push him back. Bruce feels a tremor run through him, but Jason's hand strays from his chest to cup the side of Bruce's face. "Look at me," Jason orders him, and Bruce drags his eyes open. "It's okay."

"Jason," Bruce says abjectly. "It's not okay."

"Okay, it's not okay," Jason says with a hint of loopy exasperation. "It's not okay. But I made it hard for you. I know I did; I was trying to make it hard. That was the point. I was trying to make it hard, I was trying to hurt you. You fucked up." He is still holding Bruce's face, forcing Bruce to meet his eyes. "I was a fucking mess and I dragged you into it and I can see that now. You're a mess, too. I always knew that. You fuck up, I fuck up, we all fuck up together. Do you forgive me?"

"Yes," Bruce says without hesitation.

"Then I forgive you, too. Now we try to do better." He pats Bruce's cheek and lets his arm flop down beside him on the bed.

"Jay," Bruce says, his mouth twitching into a smile even as his eyes begin to sting, "I appreciate this, believe me, but you're pretty high right now."

Jason blinks. "Right, morphine."

"Yes, morphine. You may not remember this conversation tomorrow."

"Well then," Jason says. "We'll have to have it again tomorrow."

Bruce savors the word.

 _Tomorrow_.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not, strictly speaking, Lysical's fault. But she did edit it for me. (Thank you Lys!)


End file.
